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Six months on from the initial reveal, we had an Apple Watch on our wrist for the first time.
There was also a chance to have a sneak peak at the new MacBook too, as Apple looks to consolidate its place at the top of the notebook laptop market.
So finally, here is what the Apple Watch looks and feels like, as Apple CEO Tim Cook says, when it’s “on you”.
The version we tried out was from the mid-range, stainless steel-based Apple Watch collection, and came with a steel link band that wouldn’t feel out of place on an up-market traditional wrist watch.
The Watch itself doesn’t feel weighty on the wrist, quite the opposite in fact. It’s easy to forget you’re wearing it. Perhaps this is a bad thing – given the hefty price you almost expect something a little more substantial on your wrist.
Another interesting point around the steel link band is the ability to customise the strap, by either adding or taking out links yourself. Doing away with the need to visit a jeweller’s in order to have your watch re-sized. A big positive.
Lift your wrist and the Watch comes to life. From what we could tell, the sensor in the Apple Watch is very good at registering when you raise your wrist to look at it, rather than just moving your arm. This has been hit-and-miss for a lot of smartwatch developers, but already feels a smooth process here. The days of folding your arms and illuminating your smartwatch could be over.
Once your wrist is raised and the screen lights up the real experience begins. The watch face is the first screen you will see, and this is customisable on a couple of levels. Firstly, you can select from the huge array of styles that Apple has on offer; ranging from traditional two-hand set-ups to digital faces, simple screens containing the time and a single moving image, and of course the Mickey Mouse face we saw at the launch presentation.
Secondly, on faces that have multiple areas of information, you can alter these as you see fit. Replace the current weather with stock market updates or the date with your schedule.
A press of the much-spoken about digital crown takes you to the main app screen, where all your icons are laid out. It’s an unfamiliar patten but they still have recognisable logos so navigation is never really an issue. The icons themselves though are quite small, so you can’t help but feel the need to be extra careful when trying to tap the right one. We’re not sure if that made us more accurate or Apple has nailed the precision of the screen’s pressure-reading, but we didn’t go wrong once.
During our demo we were taken through the main areas of Watch functionality, the first of which was messages. The side button, located below the digital crown, is a short cut to your favourite friends – a list you can edit and use the crown to scroll through. From here you can quickly contact any of your nearest and dearest. Each name has three options next to it; call, message or Digital Touch. This is Apple’s “intimate” new way of communicating, where two Watch users can link up their devices and send doodles to each other, animated emojis, and even their heartbeat.
The Taptic feedback (vibrations) can be intensified or relaxed depending on your preference, but at the lower end offer a subtle nudge to let you know of notification. It’s subtle and not intrusive, and can be used by friends to get your attention. The heartbeat sharing is just a little weird. Although that may have been due to us sharing it with an Apple worker we’d never met before.
The health and fitness features of the Watch are arguably the most striking at this stage, with the Watch able to differentiate between general movement, exercise and rest – even giving you a vibration nudge when you’ve been sat still for too long. All this is heavily customisable, with manual exercise input options, as well as the ability to set a goal based on distance, calories you want to burn or time. Or, if none of this suits you, you can have an open goal.
Something we did notice was how easily the screen appeared to get dirty, even ahead of the iPhone and indeed other smartwatches. The presence of the digital crown gives users the option to navigate without touching and therefore blocking the screen. It works brilliantly, and adjusts as you scroll at different paces, but it didn’t seem to reduce the amount of screen smudge.
Verdict
The most compelling emotion we left our first Apple Watch hands-on with was minor disappointment. The Watch didn’t wow the first time you encountered it the same way the iPhone 6 Plus did, or the original iPad. Maybe it’s because we’ve been thinking about it for six months, or maybe Apple Watch – much like a number of Apple products – could take two or three generations to nail it.
On the other hand, the latest member of the MacBook family dazzled the moment we laid eyes on it.
For the first time, Apple’s notebook now comes in space grey and gold – and both looked stunning when placed in front of you. Maybe that’s down to the big design changes that have been made.
These include putting the MacBook on a diet. Incredibly this new notebook is thinner than the 11-inch MacBook Air, and it weighs only 2lbs – that’s just over 900g. Picking up the MacBook was a joy – this is a powerful laptop and it weights only slightly more (200g) than the original iPad. Combined with how thin it is you can’t help but feel capable of using this anywhere. More so than ever.
The new, full-size keyboard is an interesting step too. Now when you open the MacBook the keys run all the way to the edge, and it’s a sight that takes some getting used to. The re-design of the individual keys which Phil Schiller and Jony Ive spoke about during the presentation is also obvious once you get your hands on them.
Apple has redesigned the mechanism beneath keys so they are more stable when you hit them. The aim was to remove wobble and that is definitely the case. Though it does feel slightly alien to type on such a stable surface – as though you’re tapping a table – it becomes comfortable quickly. Mark it down as another one of those problems you didn’t know you had being fixed by Apple.
The other big hardware feature is the new trackpad, which Apple tells us has new levels of pressure sensitivity. They’re not wrong; the new Force Touch feature is an interesting new shortcut, where a firmer click on the trackpad takes the place of a right click essentially.
We used it to fast-forward through a video – the harder a press, the quicker the video moved forward. A nice, subtle touch with genuine every-day usage qualities.
But Apple has gone further than this, with Force Click on words bringing up Wikipedia entries for them, and addresses showing maps to that location. Some AI has been applied here and it works very well. OS X just got a little smarter.
It is the MacBook that steals the show here. Perhaps the freshness and surprise of the product gives it the edge – but that design certainly helps. The Apple Watch has an impressive array of apps and features for launch, and will doubtlessly fly off the shelves regardless of the price. But it still feels like a work in progress. This is a new market for Apple after all – even it can’t score 100% at the first attempt.
